The purpose of this study is to analyze the changes of day-care policy in Korea from historical perspectives. The methods of the study include both literature review and interviews. For the analysis of policy changes, literatures of the policies from 1960 to 2008 were reviewed. In addition, interviews are used to explore some policies in detail. There appears to be three main shifts of the policies: the deficit period, the participatory period, and the period of children's right. The deficit period includes day-care policies for children in need. The policies of participatory period focused on the participation of the parents, teachers, and administrators in the decision-making process of policies and administration as down-top process. Finally, the policies of children's right emphasized the rights of children in day-care. These changes were found to be influenced by social, political, and cultural changes related to history in Korea. The deficit period was mainly influenced by social change whereas both the participatory period and the period of children' right were mostly influenced by political factors. Even though those policies are legitimate, some of those policies are found to be ineffective in administration system. The reason of the ineffectiveness is attributed to the cultural factors as well as administration system. In conclusion, the importance of cultural aspects of policy and administration will be discussed.

Full paper download: Song S_day-care policy in Korea.pdf

Recently there are many social problems that happens to new-social risk issues. Especially the erosion of the male breadwinner/female homemaker family form constitutes one of the critical challenges confronting contemporary welfare states. And it is requested to solve the problems of life-work balance. So I think that child care is an important social problem is related to the role of state. For this purpose I studied response of socializing care in welfare state restructuring with focus on child care policy. Child care policy is representative policy be able to be socialized care-work, and then it is also a policy that is related to women's labor market participation.

So, this paper studied divergent patterns of response in child care policy comparatively with focus on eight countries - Sweden, Danish, Dutch, Italy, French, Australia, Britain, and the United States. For this ones, I use two analysis standards. One is publicity of child care services, and the other is child care politics. As a result of there is a distinct response difference regardless of traditional welfare regime, and I've known that the cause of difference is on the child care politics. This paper aims to get the implications of political by making a comparative study with child care policy of other countries.

Full paper download: Lee S_restructuring process of welfare states.pdf

The changes of economic, social, and demographic circumstances have posed new challenges to post-war welfare states in recent decades. The rise of the service economy, aging population, increasing labour market participation of women, and changes of family structure have transformed the social risks which welfare states faced in post-war era. Among these new challenges, reconciliation of work and family life is one of the most significant issues. Failure to deal with the difficulties in reconciling work and family life could hinder parents' participation in the labour market. In addition, some parents have to adjust their working patterns such as taking part-time jobs or flexible work to fulfil their family roles and care responsibilities. These arrangements could lead to the loss of income and welfare entitlements. Therefore, many welfare states have formulated new policies to support the combination of work and care. However, although it has been an important concern across European countries, it is not clear to what extent this social risk exists in Taiwan. Due to relatively lower women's labour market participation and strong emphasis on the family to provide care for children and the elderly, the difficulties in reconciling work and family life in Taiwan are usually ignored and underestimated. To extend the understanding of this issue and related policy reforms in Taiwan, this paper aims to examine to what extent the difficulties in reconciling work and family life can be identified as an emerging social risk in Taiwan. Moreover, this paper will review relevant policy reforms in recent years. From this analysis, it can be shown how new policy solutions are affected by existing welfare arrangements and welfare regime frameworks.

Full paper download: Tsai P_work and family life in Taiwan.pdf

In Korean Assembly the total number of gender related legislations and the rate of passed legislation drastically increased from the year 1998. The question is why did gender related legislations increase from that year? To answer this question, I address the policy reforms that had occurred in Korea and moreover the reasons to such institutional changes. After analyzing the institutional change in the policy making structure, I show how the institutions had impact on the gender related legislations. Briefly, the results show that the women's movement in South Korea had attempted to engage in institutional politics and to place their gender concerns on the political agenda. And under the advent of reformative regimes since 1998, the women's movement has succeeded in dramatically increasing the number of women legislators in the National Assembly and in establishing a formal political institution, the Ministry of Gender Equality (MGE), which represents their cause. Those institutional changes were crucial causes of the drastic increase on gender related legislations. Thus, in this paper, I descriptively assess the increase of gender-relevant legislation inside the National Assembly. I then illuminate the causes of drastic increase in gender related legislation by applying the influence of two major policy institution reforms. I, as a result, demonstrate that the women's movement in South Korea was successful in intervening in political institutions and the political institutional change was successful in increasing gender related legislations.

Full paper download: Oh E_movement institutionalization and consequences.pdf

The purpose of this study is to investigate foster care characteristics and to identify the relationship between social support recognized by foster care children and psychosocial adjustment according to the three types of foster home. For this, total 465 foster children who are listed on 16 foster care support centers were selected and surveyed. The results showed that there were several differences in foster children's characteristics and foster home characteristics. In comparison to the non-relative foster home, specifically, kinship foster care home showed relatively poorer socioeconomic environments. However, there was no difference in psychosocial adjustment of foster children among the three types of foster home. In addition, several variables were identified to influence on the psychosocial adjustment of foster children. First, school grade, health status, self-efficiency, the reason placed in foster home, monthly income, peer support, family support were influenced on the depression and especially peer and family support were played a role to decrease the depression. Second, duration in foster care, self-efficiency, the reason placed in foster home, caregiver age, household debt, housing type, peer support were identified as important factors to explain the aggression but, the family support and teacher support were not played roles in relieving the aggression. Based on the results, several policy and program implication were suggested.

This paper examines trends and gender differences in time use in Korea. The economic approach suggests that changes in women's employment, the delay in marriage and decline in fertility have reduced demand for unpaid work. As a result, the amount of time spent on paid and unpaid work between men and women is converging. At the same time, the gender perspective argues that due to changes in economics, demographics and norms the differentiated time use between men and women can be fine-tuned, but the gender inequality remains fundamental. This research examines the Korean case in light of these explanations. In traditional Korean society, gender roles were rigidly divided. In post industrial society, however, changes in women's role and in the family are evident. These changes have been facilitated by the decline in fertility, the increase in divorce, the increase in women's labor market participation, and the decrease in the number of extended families. This research uses the national representative time use survey data of 1999 and 2004 and examines how much time women and men spent on paid work, unpaid work and non-productive activities. This paper argues that women's increased involvement in paid work, changes in gender role, and in family forms may have increased the amount of time that men spend on unpaid care work. However, the increases are far from meaningful for gender relations in practice despite the significant social and economic changes.